ssion,--and Thady's face
was certainly no emblem of good news. He had also had a sad morning's
work with his curate, his parishioners were in great troubles, the
times were very bad on them; many of them were in gaol for illegal
distillation; more were engaged in the business, and were determined
so to continue in open defiance of the police; many of them were
becoming ribbonmen, or, at any rate, were joining secret and illegal
societies. Driven from their cabins and little holdings, their crops
and cattle taken from them, they were everywhere around desperate
with poverty, and discontented equally with their own landlords and
the restraints put upon them by government. All this weighed heavily
on Father John's mind, and he strongly felt the difficulty of his own
situation; but he was not the man to allow his spirits to master him
when entertaining others in his own house. Had only Cullen or only
Thady been there, he would have tuned his own mind to that of his
guest; but as their cases were so different, he tried to cheer them
both.

"Egad, Thady, here's another leg--come, my boy, we've still a leg
to stand upon--Cullen has just finished one, and I could have sworn
I ate the other yesterday. See, did Judy put one of her own in
the hash--_'ex pede Herculem'_--you'd know it so any way by the
toughness. Lend me your fork, Thady, or excuse my own. Well, when I
get the cash from Denis's marriage, I'll get a carving-knife and fork
from Garley's; not but what I ought to have one. Judy, where's the
big fork?"

"Why, didn't yer riverence smash it entirely drawing the cork from
the bottle of sherry wine ye got for Doctor Blake the day he was here
about the dispinsary business?"

This little explanation Judy bawled from the kitchen.

"It is true for you, Judy; so I did, and bad luck to the day and
Doctor Blake, too. That same day, Thady, cost me three good shillings
for a bottle of bad wine, my old fork, and a leg of mutton and all;
for I thought I'd be able to come round the doctor about his coming
down to Drumsna here once a week regular; and when he'd ate my mutton
and drank the sherry, he just told me it was not possible."

"He'd sooner be making may be twenty or thirty poor sick craturs be
walking five or six miles, than he'd ride over to see them; though
it's little he'd think of the distance av he'd a fee to touch."

"For the matter of that, Cullen, I think yourself would go quicker to
a wedding than you would to a